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domains Are old school domain investors still relevant?

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equity78

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So last week Rick Schwartz posted a semi - cryptic blog post. Some see it as a potential return to blogging. I thought either blogging or starting up a new forum, or conference. I had mentioned it in conversation to a few people over the weekend. One person asked me why I thought that was news and if Rick Schwartz is even relevant anymore. This person went on that they were only 26 and their heroes in … [Read more...]
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Some of the comments are funny. What they fail to realize is we need Rick as this industry is not very well regulated. We need the hall of shame, we need @Grilled, we need as much help as we can get.
The brandable market changes all the time, the newbies will push other suffixes and prefixes because they can't hand reg the oldies. Most developers will launch first and ask questions later because that's how you know something may stick. Can't we all just get along? :D
 
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Yes the sales speak for themselves. They have the success and wisdom.
 
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So, what is "old school" in this context? No bots and handregging due to being in the right place in right time? If somebody handregged 2-letter .com in 198x - this by itself does not make him/her "domain god". He/she was just lucky. Experience, common sense and ability to adopt business models to new realities in constantly changing enviroments - this is the key imho. Whether somebody started in 1985, 2005 or 2015 means little or nothing in "old school relevance" context if they already became professionals...
 
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So, what is "old school" in this context? No bots and handregging due to being in the right place in right time? If somebody handregged 2-letter .com in 198x - this by itself does not make him/her "domain god". He/she was just lucky. Experience, common sense and ability to adopt business models to new realities in constantly changing enviroments - this is the key imho. Whether somebody started in 1985, 2005 or 2015 means little or nothing in "old school relevance" context if they already became professionals...

I think most people know what old school means, but to use a dictionary In slang, old school (or old skool) can refer to anything that is from an earlier era or anything that may be considered old-fashioned. The term is commonly used to suggest a high regard for something that has been shown to have lasting value or quality.

No someone who started in 2015 is not old school, at least not in my opinion. Mike Berkens asked on Twitter do we mean old? Well you couldn't start in 1995-1999 and be real young today unless you were a 12 year old prodigy.
 
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That is cryptic- but can only assume it is with all the great news of people dumping their facebook accounts. The #DeleteFacebook with people like Elon Musk leaving it publically, it pushes people back outside of the slime pit and censorship of Facebook and other social media attempt to destroy open and free thinking with their own agendas. Great to see if people realize this and some perhaps move back out of the social media platforms and into the open web. Makes sense that domains may become more in the public eye for blogging as they were traditionally.

News about SquareSpace buying Weebly is interesting.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/26/...g-acquistion-365-million-website-store-retail

Nic Danger whoever you out there, I agree.

ricksblogcomment.jpg
 
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Just like anything in life, they are relevant because some may believe that they are. They probably will stay relevant as long as they stay in the game and .COM stays relevant. Billions of people had the opportunity to get a portfolio of domains together over 20 years ago but very few did and even less kept their domains. Most people sold up as soon as they doubled or tripped their money...so they do deserve some credit. Domaining is still a relatively new term (so new that the auto correct still doesn't recognise it as word) so guidance is required.
 
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So, what is "old school" in this context? No bots and handregging due to being in the right place in right time? If somebody handregged 2-letter .com in 198x - this by itself does not make him/her "domain god".

I totally agree with this part, as I registered a LL.com back in the day for a website when I was in school, and while I fully grasped the value of short websites before a lot of people, what I missed (likely due to my age and having no $$$) was the prescience to understand how incredibly lucrative this type of investment would turn out to be on the aftermarket.

I give full kudos to those who were there on Ground Zero, buying and selling domains before there was any infrastructure at all, as they definitely had the foresight to recognize an opportunity before anyone else did.
 
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I think if your at a place when people listen, then you are still relevant. Like him or hate him or love to hate him....when rick speaks, posts or tweets, people listen and more importantly react...our team reaches out to rick every 6 months or so to check in and its always some short words of wisdom.......Im not sure if the same can be said for those noobie domainers.
 
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The "old-school" hand-reg a bunch of domain names and expect to profit is not possible these days. When renewing your portfolio you need to select the domain names that hold value and can be sold, or let them go.
 
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Are old school domain investors still relevant?
Only if they're actively successful in this business. :greedy:

Leave for too long and you won't know enough about what's going on to give any timely, sound, or relevant advice. :bookworm:
 
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We should all be judged by our domains and sales, not our relevancy to an otherwise low-key industry...IMO.
 
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The "old-school" hand-reg a bunch of domain names and expect to profit is not possible these days. When renewing your portfolio you need to select the domain names that hold value and can be sold, or let them go.

Agreed, and it's a LOT harder to be successful in the biz now than back in the day. Literally a monkey could have made money then (I know I did :-P) but now it take a lot more business acumen and hard work to eke out a profit on current (not long-held domains) purchases.
 
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are you hoping to get taught?

as soon as someone sells a domain for a meaningfull amount
he is what?

he has done it once..
now twice..

does he know more then me???

nobody knows

as Steve Jobs said
"you are already naked- follow your heart"
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5255891.Steve_Jobs






“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
Steve Jobs
 
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I think that nowadays those guys who report $XXX-XXXX sales of recently hand regged names in famous Namepros sales thread are much more relevant. Plus Mike Mann as far as he reports his sales.
 
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I think that nowadays those guys who report $XXX-XXXX sales of recently hand regged names in famous Namepros sales thread are much more relevant.

I think the commentary and opinions of some old school domainers like Rick are still very relevant, but I do agree wholeheartedly that their sales are not.

I mean, you read that some 4-letter word registered in 1988 sold for $2,000,000, what do you think? Probably "Great, now I just need to finish that time machine...". It's like reading about how some guy invested in Apple stock in the late-70's. Cool story bro, but exactly how does it help me invest in stocks today?.

Stuff like this is just not relevant in 2018 and probably hasn't been relevant for decades.
 
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I respect Ricks sales, but i don’t take too much of what he says seriously.

He says lots of things on his Twitter/blog and many things he says contradicts what he said a few weeks/months earlier, but even though he will come out with 2 different things, he will then will then have a quote in his signature of the version he did get right as if to say ‘i told you so’ :-/

Looking at his buys/registrations now though, i do think he’d struggle if he was just starting out today, the major sales he still gets are his past investments from many years/decades ago, i tend to listen to people more who started out last 5 years or so and making a name for themselves.

M Mann, I'm not sure how much you can learn from him. His whole system seems to go against the rule book, seemingly poor quality/droppable names for large amounts of money, i don't think anyone could imitate his system and have the same success.
 
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They would be relevant FOR ME if they would speak and deal more with new gTLDs.

It is nice to hear that 1 word .com are great and for millions of usd, but this does not help 99% of people who start lets say in 2018. As stated in previous posts, we do not have time machines...

It is fact though that many of 'old school' domainers are heavily invested in new gTLDs, but most of them do not much care about passing their knowledge to others...they accessed Early Access rounds, got the best domains for themselfs and they hold them now and sell some from time to time. But I did not see any helpful posts or articles from them about new gTLDs, so no need to speak about relevancy to others. I guess they are just learning about new stuff the same way as the rest of us.

And there are some vocal critics of new gTLDs, probably thinking it will protect their legacy extension portfolios value (yes, it works partially) and educating rest of us that only good .com is "woth of living for" and nohing else...again, that is no relevancy to others. Nothing against great .com names, I would love to own them, but just repeating the obvious as many people also do on this forum that ".com is the king" does not bring any new knowledge..it is true, but intelectually, it is not a challenge. The challenge is to try to understand new things around us and how we can utilize them to our advantage and profit.

It is a fact that domaining is a rather individual "sport"...almost no one is going to teach you something on his own expense, so to speak :) There are few exceptions though and luckily most of them active on this forum.
 
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if you think new domainers are cool then you should look at this robot insurance.com for 55,000,000$ . you use the same old ways with new stuff then you expect to make money without mentioning that the king of domains knows more about domains then any of you but yes you may be right lol
 
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if you think new domainers are cool then you should look at this robot insurance.com for 55,000,000$ . you use the same old ways with new stuff then you expect to make money without mentioning that the king of domains knows more about domains then any of you but yes you may be right lol

Such a bargain, I'm grabbing my checkbook.
 
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Stuff like this is just not relevant in 2018 and probably hasn't been relevant for decades.

As I might have hinted in another thread. So what IS relevant today in being a successful domainer today. You've said it's a new paradigm, but haven't stated what the new paradigm is. I'm an old-timer. I'm still living in the old paradigm. But I still want to be a successful domainer in this new paradigm you are talking about.

Maybe you could start a thread about this new paradigm. I have a feeling it might be very interesting and controversial thread :)
 
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